Thursday, April 30, 2009

An official source has categorically denied some news agency reports quoting US Foreign Ministry Undersecretary William Burns that King Abdullah, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, had greeted Israeli President Shimon Peres on the sidelines of the UN Cultures for Peace Conference in New York last November.

The statement made by Burns was false, baseless and untrue, emphasized the source.

The source also demanded the US Foreign Ministry to deny the news and issue an explanation and clarification to this misleading news report which will not serve the good relations between the two friendly countries.

From the vehemence of the denials, one would think that he was denying rumors that Abdullah raped a small boy.

Apparently, to the Arabs, greeting an 85-year old ceremonial leader of the Jewish state is just as bad.

And, yes, the name of the conference was indeed the Cultures for Peace Conference.

Peres and King Abdullah did not shake hands or speak privately at the conference, though much ado was made in the press about the fact that they sat in the same room. This was the first time Abdullah remained in his seat while an Israeli leader spoke.

As we've noted before, Iran is one of the most seismologically active areas on the planet. Over 7000 earthquakes have been recorded there. Here is a map showing where some of them have occurred, and when:

Is this the smartest place to build nuclear reactors, even for peaceful purposes?

Britain criticised Wednesday a report by a UN human rights investigator on Israel's Gaza offensive as "unbalanced", but insisted it was extremely concerned by the situation in Gaza and the West Bank.

Last month, the UN special rapporteur on the Palestinian territories, Richard Falk, said in a report that there was "reason" to conclude that Israel's massive military offensive on Gaza in December and January was a war crime, but the Jewish state slammed the report as "one-sided".

"The report of the UN Human Rights Council's Special Rapporteur is unbalanced and contributes little," junior foreign minister Bill Rammell said in a written reply to a parliamentary question published Wednesday.

The International Institute of Counter-Terrorism has released a comprehensive report of the discrepancies between the PCHR report on "civilians" killed in Gaza and the number of them that were militants.

It is a very nice report and the goals are identical with what Suzanne, PTWatch, Leon, Marc El and I have been trying to do here. And there is some fantastic information there in identifying Hamas and other "civilian" Gazans killed who were in fact terrorists.

However, at this time we've identified more militants than they have:

ICT’s research—based both on Hamas websites and on investigation into the circumstances under which people were killed—has so far individually identified at least 314 combatants; as this effort is ongoing, the number will almost certainly increase. 18 of these identified combatants were younger than 18, and thus counted as ―children‖ by PCHR. (Detail: 1 14-year-old, 4 16-year-olds, and 13 17-year-olds.)

We have identified 461 (226 that we found plus the 235 PCHR identified) of whom 12 were children.

Read the report, plus an adjunct report by Dr. Tal Pavel that lists every casualty mentioned in a Hamas website and the specific terminology given to describe the "martyr."

I will try to contact the team responsible for that report so we can swap information.

The Egyptian authorities arrested members of an international gang accused of trading human body parts. The gang was captured by Egyptian authorities in collaboration with the Yemeni community in Egypt. The gang is accused of seducing ten Yemeni children to Cairo where their kidneys were removed in a hospital to be transplanted to patients in the hospital or be exported to other countries.

The gang is composed of 5 members headed by a Jordanian citizen named Fawaz Yosuf. The other four members of the gang are 3 Palestinians and a Yemeni national.

The gang was discovered when a Yemeni family living in Egypt informed the head of the Yemeni community there that their son was seduced by some people who took him to a private hospital and removed his kidney in return for US $5000.

However al-Gahmi affirmed that the arrested gang had links with an international criminal network that works in trading human body parts in Arab countries and in other foreign countries.

Thousands attended a Palestinian rally on Israel's Independence Day in the abandoned village of Kafrin, now a part of the northern town of Ramot Menashe.

The rally was in honor of the Nakba, a holiday marking the expulsion of Palestinian refugees from their land during the War of Independence.

Palestinian Arabs could have chosen to celebrate their Nakba Day on any day of the year. They could have chosen the day of the Deir Yassin massacre, or the day that Jordan annexed the West Bank. They specifically chose the day that Israel gained its independence - in order to detract from Zionist celebrations.

So we have the ironic situation where the major day to commemorate Palestinian Arab nationalism is timed to be staged to coincide with Yom Ha'atzmaut - a holiday based on the Jewish calendar!

To be sure, they will also "celebrate" their utter incompetence and track record of missed opportunities on May 15th, on November 29th, and on every other day they can find to gain photo-ops.

As we've seen before, the very essence of Palestinian Arab national identity is based not on anything positive about their own pseudo-history, but entirely on the negation of Zionist history. PalArab nationalism is by definition a negative movement.

The arranged marriage of an 8-year-old girl to a 50-year-old man, who has two other wives, has been annulled in an out-of-court settlement, court sources said Wednesday.

The settlement, mediated by a new judge at the court, was not without lengthy negotiations between the girl’s lawyer and the husband who clung on to the legality of the marriage until the end of the working day, when he finally agreed to divorce the child wife.

The parties involved were tight-lipped about the settlement. The lawyer, who was hired by the girl’s mother, was not allowed to talk about the settlement to the media until an official announcement of the divorce.

The previous judge in the case, Sheikh Habib Al-Habib, had first refused to annul the marriage last year. But he later said he would reconsider the case upon the girl’s appeal on reaching the age of puberty or upon her mother’s appeal.

Earlier this month, Sheikh Al-Habib ruled for the second time that the girl’s marriage to a friend of her father’s was legal and binding. The father is said to have married off his girl to his close friend to pay off a debt.

The divorce settlement will hence annul Sheikh Al-Habib’s verdict on the case that is being reviewed by the Court of Cassations.

The word "settlement" means that the new judge wouldn't annul the "marriage" until the "husband" was paid off and agreed to it...meaning that if the pedophile didn't agree, she would still be his.

A couple of people decided to look up Nael Barghouti, the person I mentioned in my last post as supposedly the record-breaking prisoner. The only place we see that name mentioned is as the architect of the Park Hotel bombing that killed 20 in 2002.

If he is in fact that same guy, then the article quoted was even more of a lie than I thought. Barghouti would have only been in prison a maximum of 7 consecutive years and calling him a "political prisoner" would also be an outright lie.

On Friday, 1 May, Palestinian prisoner Nael Barghouthi will become the world’s record-holder for serving the longest running prison sentence in the world.

Barghouthi will have completed more than 31 years in Israeli custody by May, said Abd An-Nasser Farawna, a Palestinian specialist in prisoners affairs. On Friday, Barghouthi will break the Guinness World Record, which is currently held by Sa'id Al-Ataba, a Palestinian who was also in Israeli custody.

According to Farawna, Barghouthi was detained on 4 April 1978. He became the longest-serving Palestinian prisoner after his fellow prisoner, Sa’id Al-Ataba, was released on 25 August 2008 after efforts made by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Al-Ataba spent 31 years and 26 days in Israeli custody.

The world record for longest time served in prison is only 31 years? And this is in the Guiness Book of World Records?

That might be news to this guy who served 64 years in an American prison. And that's just the American record.

Sorry, Nael, you'll have to work a lot harder to get into Guinness.

(It would be nice if Ma'an let us know the terror attack Barghouthi did, but, alas, that detail must not be relevant to the story. )

MEMRI has another horrific clip of pure anti-semitism - from our friends the Egyptians:

Egyptian Cleric Teaches a Child to Memorize Antisemitic Messages on Al-Rahma TV and Explains: The Understanding of What He Said Will Come

Following are excerpts from an Islamist children's program, which aired on Al-Rahma TV on March 6, 2009:

Child: Oh Allah, completely, destroy and shatter the Jews. Oh Allah, torment them with a disease that has no cure or remedy. Send a thunderbolt down upon them from Heaven. Oh Allah, torment them with every kind of torment. Oh Allah, send upon them flocks of ababil birds1 that will pelt them with stones of baked clay, and turn them into straw that has been eaten. Oh Allah, turn their women into widows – just like Muslim women were widowed. Allah, turn their children into orphans – just like Muslim children were orphaned. Oh Allah, bless the efforts of the mujahideen. Oh Allah, bring victory upon us soon. Amen, amen. Peace and blessings upon you.

TV host: Well done. Well done. I let him end the program on purpose. Of course, he memorized this, and the understanding will come, Allah willing. But this is one stage in becoming a future preacher.

1 Ababil birds are described in the Koran as dropping red clay bricks on the army of elephants sent by the king of Yemen to attack Mecca in 571 CE

I wrote the original essay around 2002 and I have been adding to it since then. Here is this year's edition:

In prayers every morning Jews say a phrase praising G-d, describing Him as המחדש בכל יום תמיד מעשה בראשית - He who continually renews the act of Creation. In other words, the Jewish concept of G-d has him in an active role keeping the universe running, and as such it is appropriate to praise Him.

It is a little hard to conceptualize this idea, that the very laws of physics, of the world turning and revolving around the sun is not automatic, but only occurs due to the constant will of G-d. But perhaps it is easier to understand this phrase if we apply it to the modern state of Israel.

Every single day that the Jewish state continues to exist cannot be explained adequately with historical or social or military reasons. Which means that we are witnessing a miracle every day.

The most recent years have been very hard for Zionists, as well as for religious Zionists. Yet when we step back and look at the big picture, Israel remains something to be very proud of.

Yes, I am a Zionist and I am proud of it.
I know that Israel has the absolute right to exist in peace and security, just like - and possibly more than - any other country.

I am proud of how the IDF is conducting itself during the current war on Palestinian terror. There is no other country on the planet, save the US, that would try to minimize civilian casualties in such a situation where innocent Israelis are being threatened, shot at, mortared, rocketed, and murdered in cold blood. At times there are discussions whether the IDF's moral standards end up being counterproductive - and what other army could one even have that conversation about?

I am proud of how the IDF performs while doing the most difficult type of battle, urban warfare, while maintaining amazing professionalism under fire and minimizing its own casualties. I defy anyone to find any other nation who has performed as well -- and as ethically -- under similar circumstances as Israel has done during the current conflict. I challenge anyone to find an example of a country that was as restrained under these circumstances as Israel has been.

I am also proud that Israel will investigate any mistakes that happen on the battlefield and keep trying to improve its methods to maximize damage to the terrorists while minimizing damage to the Palestinian people. Even when everyone knows that the world will accuse it of "war crimes," the IDF retains an incredibly high moral standards.

I am proud that Israel remains a true democracy, with a free press and vigorous opposition parties, while in a constant war situation. Any other nation, again besides the US, would have imposed martial law to maintain peace.

I am proud of how the IDF responded to the terror attacks of the early days fo the intifada, managing to bring deadly suicide attacks from 60 in 2002 down to a single attack in 2007 and one in 2008. The enemy has not stopped trying, and if Israel hadn't acted decisively things would look like Iraq today. For every "successful" attack (if you can use such a term) there have been many failed attempts, and these are truly miraculous.

I am also proud of how ordinary Israelis responded to the dark days of 2002-2004. People who lost loved one created charities in their honor; responding to horror with amazing strength and selflessness.

And, of course, I am proud of Israel's many accomplishments in building up a desert wasteland into a thriving and vibrant modern country, with its many scientific achievements, world class universities and culture. A tiny nation, under constant siege, with almost no natural resources besides breathtaking beauty, has used its brains - and strength - to build a modern success story. In a short period of time Israel made itself into a strong yet open nation that its neighbors can only dream of becoming.

I am proud that the vast majority of Americans support Israel as I do, and that the rabid terror-lovers we see on the Internet are the aberration.

There is a right and a wrong in this conflict, and I am proud that Israel is in the right.

Right after the Jewish prayer phrase I quoted above is this one: מה רבו מעשיך ה , "How great are Your works, O G-d." It is easy to find faults but in the big picture, the accomplishments are remarkable and need to be highlighted.

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

The New York Daily News writes why Joseph Massad should not get tenure at Columbia, and they choose an interesting angle:

To the board of trustees of Columbia University we recommend reading a book titled "Desiring Arabs," written by a faculty member who aspires to a tenured, lifetime appointment.

The volume should also be of interest to gay and lesbian activists because author Joseph Massad accuses them of being anti-Arab conspirators.

Massad is associate professor of Arab culture and politics. His abhorrent views about Jews are well known. Now, his book reveals a man whose professed scholarly expertise amounts to crackpot racialist paranoia.

In a central thesis, Massad targets a movement he calls the "Gay International," made up of "white male European or American gay scholars" and advocates. He accuses this Gay International of, in effect, creating homosexuality in the Arab world.

He writes: "It is the very discourse of the Gay International, which both produces homosexuals, as well as gays and lesbians, where they do not exist, and represses same-sex desires that refuse to be assimilated into its sexual epistemology."

Echoing Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's infamous claim on a visit to Columbia that Iran has no homosexuals, Massad attacks the Gay International for assuming that "homosexuals, gays and lesbians are a universal category that exists everywhere in the world."

Massad also asserts that the "white Western women's movement" had similarly tried to force gender equality onto "non-Western countries."

Columbia stands for respect regardless of race, gender and sexual orientation. Believing that the military's don't-ask-don't-tell policy discriminates against gays, the school bars ROTC from campus.

It is preposterous then that the university would consider tenure for a man who espouses that homosexuality may not be a global human phenomenon and argues based on race. Massad's scholarship is lunacy.

That he is personally unfit for tenure at Columbia has been clear. He has likened Jews to Nazis and written that they suffer from a kind of psychosis that makes Jews persecute Palestinians. His idea of academic freedom is throwing a student out of class for questioning his picture of Israel as the great Satan of the Middle East.

When last we wrote about Massad, it appeared Columbia President Lee Bollinger and the trustees had granted tenure. But that may not be so.

While the university refuses comment, it may not be too late for the board, composed of leaders like Chairman William Campbell, Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit and real estate magnate Philip Milstein, to do the right thing: Deny Massad tenure.

Just an everyday capital crime in the quasi-Palestinian Arab government.

You know, the one that accuses Israel of "racism."

A special Palestinian Authority (PA) military court in Hebron in the sentenced a Palestinian man to death by hanging after he was found guilty of selling land to Israeli settlers on Tuesday.

This is the first time a Palestinian court has handed down a conviction for treason in a case relating to land sales. The suspect is from the Hebron area.

PA courts have convicted Palestinians for collaborating with Israel in the past, usually for providing information about resistance fighters to the Israeli intelligence services. These convictions are based on the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Revolutionary Code.

"Settler" is the latest code-word for "Jew" in the Palestinian Arab media. It is better than "Zionist" because everyone hates settlers. So,for example, stories about how Jews "desecrate" the Al Aqsa mosque by visiting it invariably refer to them as "settlers."

Since saying that it is a capital crime to sell land to Jews sounds suspiciously anti-semitic, it is easier to just call them "settlers" - as if a Jew from Los Angeles or Moscow would have any more right to buy land from Arabs who happen to live in the West Bank.

But that is trivial compared to the symbolism of other recent gifts given by prominent Arabs.

Jordan's King Hussein presented President Obama with a gift of a "royal weaponry set," including four daggers and an axe.

Because nothing says "peace" like instruments of war!

Last year, Abdullah gifted Defense Secretary Robert Gates with a steel dagger, and Bahrain gave him a $3200 Arab knife.

In 2006 and 2007, Prince Charles received a number of gold swords from Gulf states.

And last week, a group of Palestinian Arab Christians presented the Pope with a keffiyeh:

At the end of the service, two youths from the group were brought to the pope and draped the checkered black-and-white scarf on his shoulders. Benedict chatted briefly with them while wearing the scarf, which an aide later removed.

Now, what could a keffiyeh symbolize? According to Palestinian Arabs themselves, it represents nothing less than support for terrorism (a.k.a., "resistance"), something that the Left admits candidly among themselves - as this description from a socialist website shows:

In the 1960s, the kaffiyeh was renewed as a symbol of resistance as Palestinians escalated armed resistance in response to Israel’s 1967 invasion and occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. The resistance captured the world’s attention when Leila Khaled and other members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine—a Marxist group —wore kaffiyehs while hijacking five international airliners. These operations drew attention to the Palestinian struggle.

The kaffiyeh was made most popular by the late Yassir Arafat. He wore it draped around his head in the shape of historic Palestine throughout his years of participation in the resistance movement, then as president of the Palestinian National Authority.

...Thousands of women and men, young and old, now wear the kaffiyeh proudly as a symbol of resistance and solidarity with the Palestinian struggle.

Firas Press reports that suddenly, Ramallah and other West Bank towns are being covered in posters depicting Mahmoud Abbas/Abu Mazen. No one is taking credit for this proliferation, but it is irritating residents and prompting uncomplimentary graffiti.

Message boards are trying to guess at the reasons for this, some suggesting that since he spends so much time traveling, it is to remind people what he looks like.

Abbas' people deny being behind this.

One analyst is quoted as saying that this is an attempt to solidify Abbas' (perceived) leadership, not only of the PA but also of the PLO, which Hamas had recently threatened to subvert by creating an alternative.

Either way, some towns in Fatah-ruled territory are starting to look like Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

About a month ago, Hamas offered $3000 for men in Gaza to marry widows of "martyrs" as additional wives.

According to an article in today's Al Quds, they even had a date set for the group wedding in June.

For some reason, though, the grieving widows aren't rushing to become secondary or tertiary wives for strangers. The article interviews a number of the women, most of whom have no interest in this brilliant plan that is meant to "contribute to the reduction of social, psychological and economic problems in the Palestinian society," as one of the advocates of the idea says.

It sure is a mystery why women wouldn't be receptive to being pressured into marrying men who would get a few thousand dollars.

Perhaps more interesting is a sarcastic comment written in response to the article, by someone who clearly is not a fan of Hamas:

I have the solution!

I don't think we need an organization to solve this problem. All what you need is to find TEN men like EL RAYAN [I am assuming that he is referring to Nizar Rayyan, Hamas leader who forced his wives and childrens to die for his own entry into Paradise - EOZ], and there are plenty of them in Hamas, and have EACH marry nine like what EL RAYAN DID, and you will solve the problem. 100%10=10. you see, easy. and they will be happy to do it, because this is the only way to paradise. fast and easy way. and then, if he decides to get rid of them, he goes and sits in the house and wait for the enemy to blow the house up with every body in there, including children. then he goes to janah, and get another sixty to make seventy for his VIRGIN QUOTA. and that is it. la hawal wala quata ela belah. ["there is no power or strength except through Allâh ] they widowed those women, in conspiracy with the enemy and others in the region and now they want to help them by doing so.

Fatah leaders Hakam Bal’awi and Nasser Yousef brawled on Monday in Jordan as the two attended a planning meeting ahead of the Sixth Fatah conference, sources inside the movement said.

A heated argument nearly came to blows during a late afternoon session of the planning committee, which has been preparing for a party conference set to re-think the structure and purpose of Fatah. As a result of the argument meetings for the conference were postponed.

According to insiders the fight broke out when Bal’awi suggested younger generations of Fatah members join the conference to ensure fresh ideas at the conference. Yousef categorically rejected the idea saying the meeting, which could have participants in the hundreds of thousands, in favor of keeping the meeting to the central leaders of the party.

When the barest suggestion of change causes old time Fatah members to freak out, what does that say about the possibility that they could ever compromise with their enemy?

Keep in mind that when Fatah says "younger generations" they are referring to the leaders of the intifada - of 1988.

(For an update and a summary, see this posting. A video summarizing this posting can be seen here.)

Using various public websites, PTWatch, Suzanne,t34zakat and I have identified no fewer that 363 terrorists killed by the IDF that have been reported as "civilians" by PCHR. 22 of them are called "children" by PCHR.

Out of 279 policemen killed, 209 have been identified as terrorists - 75%.

Here they are. The numbers represent the position they were on the PCHR list of casualties, and the links go to sites that prove they were not civilian (many of the ones at almoltaqa and alqassam include pictures of them with rockets and in uniform):

Terrorists with the word "Battalion" in their description comes from a list in an Al Qassam message board, describing them all as "Qassam martyrs" from various Qassam Brigades battalions. PCHR verifies their home location consistent with - although their deaths were not necessarily in the same places.

Obviously not every terrorist name is easily found on Arab websites, not the least because it is difficult to transliterate the Arabic consistently. At the very least, however, this proves that the PCHR definition of "civilian death" is a lie, and there entire methodology must be questioned.

--Other notes:

#231 Salem Ahmed Salem Abu Shamla apparently killed by Hamas #311 and #317 appear to be the same person (Islam Mohammed Abdul Rahim al-Sahhar, policeman)#1366 and #1395 appear to be the same person (Khamis Nemer Abdul Latif Zughra, 22)#504 is blank#851 and #898 appear to be the same person#298 and #344 appear to be the same person#173 and #289 are the same person

From MEMRI : Jordanian businessman Talal Abu Ghazaleh said that there was an “easy solution” to the Palestinian problem: “Let every Pal...

Hasbys!

Elder of Ziyon - حـكـيـم صـهـيـون

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